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The Left Comes for Bob Woodward

RUSH: I tell you, folks, they are coming for Bob Woodward. This is a sight to behold. This is one of the many things I said about Bob Woodward yesterday on this program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I don't know, folks. I don't know. I'm just not sure that what we're dealing with here is a "you're gonna have a dead horse in your bed tomorrow morning" kind of threat. I don't think that's what we're dealing with. I do think the White House is gonna take care of Woodward with a death panel down the road. That's how they're gonna deal with this. We'll never know. Woodward's gonna get sick and the death panel will come in there and that will be that. No, no, no. There's not gonna be a drone with his name on it. They'll just do it with a death panel, just handle this with a death panel.

RUSH: Okay. As is the usual case, I, El Rushbo, make a joke about liberals, turns out it is not a joke. At BuzzFeed, which is a website started by a guy who used to be at The Politico, at BuzzFeed, they've got a guy who is telling everybody that the real dirty secret in Washington is that everybody is just waiting for Woodward to die so that they can start dishing all the dirt on him that everybody knows. He's 69, 70 years old, and they can't wait for Woodward to die.

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RUSH: So, anyway, Current TV, what I was gonna say, the GOP is helping Al Jazeera lobby the FCC for approval. GOP lobbyists are helping Al Jazeera get FCC approval on the sale of Current TV, Gore's network, Al Jazeera. I read that right before the show started. 'Cause they're being paid. Because they're being paid.

So, anyway, the host here, BuzzFeed correspondent Michael Hastings is talking with the host Cenk Uygur. Uygur said, "Woodward is such a great microcosm of the media in Washington. He went from challenging the government to being like a spokesperson for the establishment. And that right there in a nutshell is exactly what happened in the Washington media between the seventies and now."

UYGUR: He does hold all these guys' secrets. The reason Woodward doesn't feel totally threatened, 'cause he knows the dirt about all these people, too. He's like a J. Edgar Hoover type, right? I mean, there are people waiting for Woodward to die so they can dish stuff on him that they're too afraid to say now.

RUSH: People are waiting for Woodward to die, like Deep Throat had to die for all the dirt to be dished. People are waiting. People don't like Woodward. This is what we're hearing. The media doesn't like him at all. They resent him. By the way, I believe this. I now believe that instead of all this respect and awe and reverence for Woodward, I think these people are just like anybody else in human nature. They are jealous. They're angry. They think Woodward hasn't earned this status. He doesn't really deserve it. He wouldn't have been anything if it wouldn't have been for Ben Bradlee allowing him to do the story.

You know how people are around successful people. The successful really didn't do it on their own. They had help. Somebody paved the way. Somebody greased the skids. There's always resentment for people at the top. People run around saying, "They didn't do it on their own. They're not that good." It's the way people make themselves feel better. So apparently, rather than this awe and reverence and respect for Woodward, there is the usual collection of human beings engaging in human nature. They're jealous. They're envious. They're resentful. And they're also afraid of him. But when he dies, they can't wait to dish.

And here is a story at the website Gawker. Now, I happen to like the Gawker guys. I think they're funny. They hate me. They literally despise me. They're largely a bunch of gay guys, and they routinely laugh at and make fun of me. I just laugh. I don't know, I just like Gawker. It's strange. I can't really explain it. It's not that I really like 'em. It's just, you know, I understand their game. But a lot of people think the Gawker guys are the biggest dirt bag website in the media. A lot of people think that about Gawker. Now, that's not me, but I'm just telling you.

The Gawker website has a piece, "Good-bye, Bob." It is a long piece, and they're sliming Bob Woodward here as unreliable, all of these things I just described to you. All these things about human nature, this resentment, this dislike, this hatred, and the picture they've got, they Photoshopped Woodward on Meet the Press. I'm gonna zoom in on the Dittocam and show you. Hang on a minute, folks, while I zoom in. They Photoshopped Woodward here and made him... this is at the Gawker website. This is how they've got him. Can you see that? Do I need to zoom in a little tighter?

That's at Gawker. Can you imagine a month ago anybody portraying Bob Woodward that way? That's the Gawker website. That's the Photoshop of him made out to be Bozo the Clown, big clown nose, white face, sad red lips and so forth. It's fascinating to watch all this. So I tell a joke yesterday, "Well, they'll take care of Woodward the death panels," and, lo and behold, in less than 24 hours the media admits that everybody there can't wait for him to die so they can dish the dirt on the guy.

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RUSH: Audio sound bite time. We got a lot of these, and they're good, and we're gonna start, Matt Lauer on the Today show. You know what I saw? I can't believe this. The Today show in the demographic 25-54, adult demographic that ostensibly advertisers covet, the Today show finished third in New York City. I didn't know it was this bad. I knew they were having some challenges there. But the Today show finished behind Good Morning America and the local morning show on Fox 5 in New York. That's a crisis. So the story I saw -- and I don't know if there's anything to it, 'cause they just re-signed Lauer to a huge deal, a huge extension, and I don't know how much of it's guaranteed. I don't know what outs Comcast has, but this story said they're already talking about maybe getting rid of him.

You know, originally it was Ann Curry's problem that nobody was watching. So they got rid of Ann Curry. Then Al Roker went out there and admitted that he poops in his pants at the White House at the Christmas party. You think that might have something to do with this? You think people really want to tune into the weather on the Today show and listen to the weather guy talk about pooping in his pants at the White House? And Al joked he didn't do it just one day, he got a whole week out of it. Then Matt Lauer went out and cut his hair. He now looks like a skinhead, and they're finally getting around to blaming him. Poor guy. Anyway, he was talking to Woodward this morning on the Today show, and here's how that started.

LAUER: These kinds of high energy, high-octane, high emotion conversations and debates happen all the time between government officials and the people who cover them. You felt the heat before. Why'd you go public with this one?

WOODWARD: Well, I didn't go public. Politico came and asked me in a long hour interview about how I decided and what the interaction was to write that op-ed piece, really calling the Obama administration out, pointing out how the president had said Congress was the one that proposed the sequestration, these automatic spending cuts. It turns out that's not true. The White House has finally acknowledged that.

RUSH: Now, I know this happened early this morning, this happened before the president's presser. Grab sound bite 32. You just heard Woodward say that the White House has acknowledged that Obama did the sequester. The White House has acknowledged now that the White House did the sequester? And that's what he reported, and they first opposed him on that but now they've admitted it. And then four-and-a-half hours later...

OBAMA: Let's be clear. None of this is necessary. It's happening because a choice that Republicans in Congress have made. They've allowed these cuts to happen because they refused to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit. As recently as yesterday they decided to protect special interest tax breaks for the well-off and the well-connected, and they think that that's apparently more important than protecting our military or middle-class families from the pain of these cuts.

RUSH: So, Bob, with all due respect, the White House has not acknowledged this. But Woodward did report that the sequester was Obama's idea, got into big trouble. But Lauer wondered, "Why are you doing this, Bob? Why are you going off the reservation?" So that was Matt Lauer. Now, Woodward is trying to stave off the death panel here because BuzzFeed, a bunch of people have put it out there, the big news in Washington today is that everybody's waiting for Woodward to die. I'm not making this up. This was on a website. It's been talked about on TV now. The upshot is that all these reporters in Washington, they don't really like Woodward. They resent him. Human nature is what it is.

We've been thinking all this time that Woodward is a god, that Woodward is an idol, that Woodward is a guy they really look up to, the guy that inspired them to get into journalism. Woodward is the guy they all want to be. Woodward is the guy you can rely on. Woodward's the guy that got access, Woodward is it. Woodward is the king of the hill. And it turns out that now that Woodward's gotten in trouble, a bunch of reporters, lower level to be sure, are now coming out and expressing the fact that Woodward is not highly respected. He's not even well liked, and they're talking about how a whole bunch of people are just waiting for Woodward to die because a lot of people have the goods and a bunch of dirt on Woodward. They can't report it while he's alive.

There are others, like at Gawker.com, who are raising the possibility that the whole Watergate story, or big parts of the Watergate story, were made up. And the only reason they ended up in the paper is because Ben Bradlee let them end up in the paper, but that Woodward and Bernstein were making stuff up left and right. So the long knives are out. Bob Woodward is in trouble. And it's amazing. When Dan Rather did a phony report on Bush and the National Guard, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings circled the wagons to protect Dan Rather. Now, big difference. A Republican was president, George W. Bush.

Whenever anybody in the media got in any trouble, when they were caught faking it, forging things, when their ratings went south, other journalists would circle the wagons, give them awards, protect them. Bob Woodward's gotten in trouble, and it looks like everybody, or many in the upper levels of journalism in the nation's capital want to throw Woodward under the bus. They're even now expressing excitement at the prospect of his death so that people can tell the truth about Woodward, that they have to hide now because he's so powerful. So he's on with Hannity last night. Hannity said, "Okay, Bob, lets start at the beginning. Tell us about the conversation in question here."

WOODWARD: People have said, "Well, this was a threat," or I was saying it was a threat. I haven't used that language, but it's not the way to operate in a White House. As you know, when somebody says you're gonna regret something, particularly somebody in a position of power like James Sperling, I just think that's a mistake. And if you go back into the history and what other people are saying now about the White House, Ron Fournier of National Journal wrote a piece that he's actually refused to talk to somebody in the White House because the language he gets from this person is so belligerent.

RUSH: That's true. But Ron Fournier also ended his piece by saying, Obama, if he knew about this, would be livid. And Woodward said something to that extent. "I can't believe Obama knows what his underlings are doing." You guys can't possibly believe that. Bob, you have to know that Obama is the inspiration for these guys and the way they're treating you and the way Fournier is being treated. Obama is the inspiration. These guys are trying to act in Obama's name. He's the Alinskyite. They're there because that's how Obama wants him to behave. Anyway, Hannity said, "Bob, do you feel that that's been a pattern with you in this White House? Did you feel at any time threatened either during the phone call, did you feel it was a threat when he wrote, 'You'll regret this'?"

WOODWARD: What happened here, I wrote a piece Sunday in the Washington Post on the op-ed page, and they got caught about being the father of the sequester, and they, for two or three months, denied that. To Jay Carney's credit, he came out and said, look, yes the idea originated here. They got caught, and so this is an old trick, make the conduct of the press the issue rather than their conduct.

RUSH: The conduct of the press? Bob, they're blaming the Republicans for everything. Well, and you now. But here's another instance of Woodward saying, "to Jay Carney's credit, he came out and said, 'yeah, the idea for the sequester originated here.'" Obama isn't saying that. And again, at his presser this morning, Obama once again blamed the Republicans for the sequester. These people, my head's swimming. Nobody knows who's really saying what here. Next question from Hannity: "So they attack you as being willfully wrong. Why should this matter? I mean, don't we deserve our government to be honest with us, Bob?"

WOODWARD: Exactly. And I'm almost 70 years old, I hate to acknowledge. I've done this for four decades. The problem is, there are all kinds of reporters who are much less experienced, who are younger, and if they're gonna get roughed up in this way and I'm flooded with e-mails from people in the press saying this is exactly the way the White House works. They're trying to control and they don't want to be challenged or crossed.